She Loved in Silence

Jane Lopez was born deaf and had polio at three, which put her in a wheelchair. Her mother May Stone has raised her alone since, working delivery routes to keep the two of them fed, and Jane has leaned on that care for her whole life. Just before Jane turns eighteen, May is diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer and told she has months. May's response is to stop being soft. She becomes hard with her daughter, pushing her toward doing things alone, refusing the help she used to give without being asked, because the point is to have Jane able to survive in a house with nobody else in it. Jane has no idea why her mother has turned cold. She reads the new sternness as rejection and pulls away, and the distance between them keeps widening while May keeps at it, running out of time to explain.